Share this:

Like this:

27 Responses to “Crystal Reports Tips”

I need to put together a bid for a client. What reporting solution would you recommend I go with? I am very well versed in Crystal and Crystal Server. I recently started using SSRS and I see its potential. Long term which solution would be a better fit? Or should I quote both for the project?

This is impossible to answer without knowing a lot more detail and it’s not always the same answer in every situation. I know both Crystal and SSRS pretty well and usually the choice of reporting tool depends on a number of things, not necessarily in order of importance:

Report design and usage – some reports lend themselves more easily to Crystal vs SSRS. For example, a report with 25 columns with drill-downs that the users will want to export to Excel might be better suited for SSRS. A report that needs to be presented to others (customers, board, bank, etc.) and always needs to be formatted a certain way may be better in Crystal.

Licensing – if Crystal licenses need to be purchased, that might be a lot more expensive than using SSRS which is included with SQL.

Resources/knowledge – if you know Crystal very well and know that it can do what the report spec requests, but you’re just starting with SSRS, that may be a big factor in your decision. I have found a number of things that are a piece of cake in Crystal, that are very difficult to accomplish in SSRS.

There are probably a few other considerations, but I think those are the most important.

Yes. You are right. The latest post of mine documents how to remove blank lines from a repeating block of information using both Text Objects (and suppression as you mention) as well as using separate Detail sections for each Text Object.

For the benefit of those in this forum, I wanted to provide what I found to be an effective way to remove blank lines (or lines that meet a criteria) in a repeating section. Based on your example, let’s say we have a customer name/address file that repeats as follows:

In order to have any one of these lines suppressed using the Text Object as you mentioned, one would need to put each line (field) in a separate Text Object, and also would put each text object in a separate Detail section as shown below:

[note: to create a new Detail section, right-click on the Detail section in the report Design tab and select “Insert section below”.]

Now, in the report Design tab, right-click on each text object and open the Format Editor. Check the “suppress embedded field blank lines” and the “can grow” boxes as Victoria indicated.

You can also check the suppress box and add an X-2 formula to suppress the field if it is NULL or based on any other criteria.

Now, and lastly, to suppress any one of the separate Detail sections (each of which contains a text object field) so there are no blank lines in the report, open the Detail section expert and click on each Detail section a through e and check the “suppress blank section” box. Voila. You have power to suppress a field and the power to suppress each line in the report.

Using these 2 powerful elements (text object and separate detail sections), you can suppress each field as needed and remove the blank lines which are controlled by the Detail section expert “suppress blank section” check box.

Thank you for priming this solution and for your terrific Crystal Reports forum.

Victoria,
I found your “Suppressing blank lines in Crystal Reports” helpful however, I have a text object that repeats (see below) and when a field is missing the text object does not shrink so there is still a blank line at the end of the text object which puts me back to square 1 : ).

Example (each field is a formula field and the numbers are the field numbers that are needed in the output file.
1,*
5,”first name”
10,”last name”
15,customer_id
20,address

I tried creating these fields using the text object example however when 1 is missing the text object is fixed and there is still a blank line. I did check the “suppress embedded field blank lines” and the “can grow” boxes in the Format Editor.

I am extremely beginner on Crystal Report.
I have some questions regarding Crystal Report and Microsoft Dynamics GP2013R2 (Dex 12.0)
I have Microsoft Dynamics GP sample code for how to run Crystal Report from GP. Unfortunately, I couldn’t able to run this code successfully.
Below is the sample code:

I am not a developer, so I cannot help with specific Dexterity questions, but I am not sure if you can run Crystal Reports through Dexterity without a lot of additional work. As an alternative, you can use a product like our GP Reports Viewer to run Crystal Reports from Dynamics GP. All the work is already done for you and GP Reports Viewer includes a ton of user-friendly additional features.

It’s me again looking for help. I am trying to format my report to eliminate blanks from suppressed sub reports. I have five detail sections and I always want the first and the last section to show in their places. The three middle sections I want to suppress (while still running the variables). I have done this with suppressing the blank reports. This leaves a gap where the report would of been. I have used underlay following button but they underlay whether they are blank or not. I haven’t been able to find a way to get them to underlay only when blank. Any ideas?

I can suppress the content but it leaves a blank space in the report for each subreport that I suppress. That is why I want to underlay the reports when they are empty so that I don’t end up with one line….several inches of blank… the last line. The underlay has a formula box but I can’t seem to get to work only when there is no data in the subreport.

I have the section expert suppress blank clicked and it leaves a blank space on the report where the subreport would have been. As this report is many pages long and each item reported against can have any and or all the reports filled or empty. I need away to control just how much blank space is showing and that is why I want to underlay blank reports so that they appear to not be there when they are not needed. If I am being dense let me know but It seems it should work. Also, I have variables in each subreport that need to work for calculations no matter if the data is blank so I have to be careful on how completely I suppress the reports.

Underlay is typically used to make something shown on top of something else, like for a watermark, so I am not sure that is what you want. Maybe it will work, but I have never used it that way and am not sure how to help you with that. You might want to try a Crystal Reports forum to see if you can get some other opinions or help for using Underlay.

Suppress Blank Section should work – I just tested it with a report I have and it works perfectly. However, you must also suppress the actual subreport field, that’s the only way the section will be considered blank. I don’t think this will be an issue with the variables on the subreport – I believe the suppression is simply on the printing, not the calculations.

Another option I am fond of is making the subreport field tiny in height and selecting ‘Can Grow’ for it – that way you can put it anywhere you want and it takes a tiny amount of space if blank, but will grow if needed. You will still need a suppress formula on the subreport field itself for this option to work.

Thanks for your interest in GP Reports Viewer. There is a User Guide included in the GP Reports Viewer installation (it will install into the GP directory) that will walk you through the steps of setting up and using GP Reports Viewer. However, if you are looking to try GP Reports Viewer with your live GP company, you would need to get trial registration keys, because the download will only work with the Fabrikam company without registration keys. To request trial registration keys, please email a screenshot of your About Microsoft Dynamics GP window to sales@flex-solutions.com. There are also some demo videos that may help: http://www.GPReportsViewer.com/demos.html.

My customers have been using GP Report Viewer with GP 2010 to view Crystal Reports. Today they have been getting the following error message – Database connector error:'[Database Vendor Code: 1105]’
How do I resolve this?

I have another question: We are planning on applying GP2010 Service Pack 2 for one of our customers who are also using GP Report Viewer. Is GP Report Viewer compatible with GP2010 SP2 and above?
Thanks.
Saras

GP Reports Viewer is compatible with GP 2010 SP2 (also called R2), however, you must be on build 55 or higher of GP Reports Viewer. If you need additional help with GP Reports Viewer, please submit a ticket on the GP Reports Viewer Support Center.

Hi Vic
I’m using CR V.10
I’ve created a customer Statement report related to(the Sales Person ID) which is required to be enter by the user.
But I need to print a separate statement for each customer in the report.. can you help me please? where I’m just a beginner in CR..I read something about page break after/before but I didn’t know how/where to use..!
I really need your help.

In the Section Expert you should be able to select a checkbox for ‘new page after’ on the group footer for the customer. It’s been many years since I have used Crystal Reports version 10, so I am not 100% sure of the exact steps to give you, as some of this may have changed…

I am using Crystal Reports version: 11.5.12.1838 with Dynamics GP. I have set up a sales report using the following tables: IV00101, SOP10100, SOP10106, SOP10200, and SOP60300. On the report I have our product number and our product description..I also have the customer product number and customer product name. The problem I can’t figure out is when in Dynamics an order is entered if there is no customer product number or name that line is not showing up in the Crystal Reports.

It’s a bit tough to diagnose without looking at the report, but I would suspect this is being caused by the type of link you have set up between one or both of the following:
SOP10200.ITEMNMBR → SOP60300.ITEMNMBR
SOP10100.CUSTNMBR → SOP60300.CUSTNMBR